Joseph Kushner Distinguished Professor of Civil Liberties Law, Hofstra University School of Law
After graduation from Harvard Law School, Professor Friedman worked for the New York City law firm of Kaye Scholer, Fierman Hays & Handler. He left the firm when his play, The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald , was produced on Broadway and was later made into a television movie. He became general counsel of a New York publishing firm, Chelsea House Publishers, and then was selected as associate director of the Committee on Courtroom Conduct for the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, where he and Norman Dorsen wrote Disorder in the Court , the leading work on the subject. Thereafter, he was the director of the Committee for Public Justice and staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union during the Watergate era, where he litigated numerous cases dealing with national security, misuse of government power, the legality of the Vietnam War and the draft, and the First Amendment. He continues to write amicus briefs on important Supreme Court cases for the ACLU, PEN American Center, the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and other public interest groups. He has testified before Congress on numerous occasions.
Professor Friedman is the author of more than 100 law journal articles and newspaper columns in such publications as The New York Times, The Nation, The New Republic, and The American Scholar. His bookThe Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 1789-1969 , won the annual Scribes Award for the best book on a legal subject. Among his other books areThe Supreme Court Confronts Abortion, Unquestioning Obedience to the President, The Wise Minority and Southern Justice .He is a leading copyright lawyer and has represented such entertainers as Kathleen Turner and James Brown as well as many authors such as John McPhee, I.B. Singer, Stephen Spender, Hunter Thompson, Susan Sontag, Oscar Hijuelos and the Estates of T.S. Eliot and Edith Wharton. He has also represented Jean Harris in an important First Amendment case dealing with the "Son of Sam" law, and Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, for whom he obtained a writ of habeas corpus, freeing him from 19 years of imprisonment. His activities on behalf of Hurricane Carter were featured in the film "The Hurricane" starring Denzel Washington. He acts as general counsel to PEN American Center, a leading writers group fighting censorship.
He lectures regularly to federal judges around the country, under the auspices of the Federal Judicial Center, on civil rights and criminal procedure. He frequently lectures at continuing legal education gatherings, such as those sponsored by the Practising Law Institute, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the American Bar Association/American Law Institute, on subjects such as civil rights, civil procedure, criminal procedure and the First Amendment.
Founding Partner, Lally & Misir, LLP
Deborah Misir is a founding partner of Lally & Misir, LLP. She specializes in complex civil and white collar trial and appellate litigation before federal, state and administrative courts. In addition, she provides advice on regulatory compliance, and public policy issues. In addition to her practice with the firm, Ms. Misir is a professor at Touro Law School, where she has taught constitutional and administrative law, and directs the Veterans Clinic.
Ms. Misir’s clients have included employers, unions, trade associations, local governments, and companies in the finance, hospitality, technology and energy sectors. She has also represented many individuals, including other lawyers, in white collar criminal, ethics and employment matters.
A leading federal litigator and expert on constitutional and government regulatory law, Ms. Misir has over twenty years of experience in both government and private practice, including briefing over seventy federal Circuit Courts of Appeals cases up to and including writs of certiorari and amicus briefs before the U.S. Supreme Court, making numerous federal appellate oral arguments, and serving as lead counsel on many federal civil and criminal district court matters. She has won several cases with published decisions in the federal courts.
Before entering private practice, Ms. Misir served in the Administration of President George W. Bush as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Policy at the U.S. Department of Labor, ethics attorney at the White House Counsel’s Office, and Chief of Staff of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Ms. Misir started her career at the U.S. Department of Justice, serving in the Executive Office for Immigration Review, headquarters of the former U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and the Civil Division. At the Justice Department, among other things, she was specially assigned as counsel to the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force, the counter-terrorism and intelligence task force created in the immediate wake of 9/11 to prevent future attacks, and as counsel to the U.S. delegation to the United Nation’s International Maritime Organization (IMO).
Ms. Misir graduated with a B.A. with honors in political science from the University of Chicago, and an M.A. from the University of Chicago’s Masters of Arts Program in the Social Sciences. She earned her law degree from the University of Minnesota Law School. After law school, Ms. Misir served honorably in the U.S. Marine Corps until an injury cut short her service.
Ms. Misir is President of the Indian American Bar Association of Long Island and Queens. She serves on the National Alumni Board of the University of Chicago’s Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences (MAPSS), and previously served on the National Board of Governors of the Republican National Lawyers Association. She is a member of the American Bar Association, the Federal Bar Council, and the Nassau County Bar Association.
Research Director, Independence Institute
David B. Kopel is Research Director at the Independence Institute; Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute; and Senior Fellow at the University of Wyoming College of Law, Firearms Research Center. He received his B.A. in history with Highest Honors from Brown University and his J.D. magna cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School.
He is the author of over 20 books, including the textbook Firearm Law and the Second Amendment: Regulation, Rights, and Policy (Aspen Pubs. 4th ed. forthcoming 2026). His scholarship and briefs have been cited 7 Supreme Court cases--including Heller, McDonald, and Bruen--and in 140 lower courts opinions. He is the author of 120 scholarly articles. His shorter articles often appear on The Volokh Conspiracy blog, hosted by Reason magazine. His topics of interest include the right to arms throughout history, the Colorado Constitution, and law enforcement policy.
Founding Partner, Cooper & Kirk PLLC
Charles J. Cooper is a founding member and the chairman of Cooper & Kirk, PLLC, “one of the Nation’s leading litigation boutiques” (Above The Law 2017). The National Law Journal recently wrote that Mr. Cooper’s “brilliant legal career has so far spanned five decades and thrust Cooper into the spotlight in some of the most historic moments of the country’s modern history.” He has argued nine cases before the United States Supreme Court and scores of appeals before each of the 13 federal courts of appeals and several state supreme courts. He has been lead trial counsel in numerous complex, weeks-long trials in federal courts throughout the country. Named by the National Law Journal as one of the 10 best litigators in Washington D.C., Mr. Cooper’s work has been reported in numerous press accounts, and he has been called a “powerhouse attorney” (Fortune 2015), “a hard-nosed litigator” (Washington Post 2017), and “one of the country’s most in-demand civil litigators and a Washington legal institution unto himself” (The American Spectator 2014).
After graduating from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1977, where he ranked first in his class and served as Editor-in-Chief of the Alabama Law Review, Mr. Cooper began his career as a law clerk to Judge Paul Roney on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and to Justice William H. Rehnquist in 1978–79. He then practiced law in Atlanta for two years before joining the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he served as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in charge of, among other things, appellate matters. In 1985 President Reagan appointed him to the position of Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, which is the office responsible for providing legal opinions and advice to the White House, the Attorney General, and Executive Branch departments and agencies on issues covering the full spectrum of federal constitutional, statutory, and regulatory law.
In 1988 he returned to private practice as a litigation partner in the Washington, D.C. office of McGuireWoods. From 1990 until the founding of Cooper & Kirk in 1996, he was a partner at Shaw Pittman (now Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman), where he headed the firm’s Constitutional and Government Litigation Group.
Mr. Cooper has represented a wide range of public and private clients in highly complex constitutional, civil rights, antitrust, healthcare, banking, intellectual property, elections, campaign finance, administrative, commercial, and government contract cases. He has led trial teams in cases that have won judgments and settlements valued in the billions of dollars and that have established ground-breaking constitutional precedents.
Much of Mr. Cooper’s practice has involved representing high-profile clients in nationally prominent matters, including: the State of Florida in a First Amendment suit brought by the Disney Company concerning its autonomous regulatory authority over its Disney World property; the Commonwealth of Virginia in a suit seeking to enjoin the removal of noncitizens from its voter rolls; 38 members of the Duke Lacrosse team falsely accused of rape by officials of Duke University and the City of Durham; Harper Lee in a copyright dispute with the heirs of Gregory Peck; high-ranking former government officials such as former Attorneys General John Ashcroft, Jeff Sessions, and William Barr, and Ambassador John Bolton; several Governors and United States Senators; over 100 Members of Congress; and many state, territorial, and local government bodies and officials. He has also represented and advised government officials and public figures in connection with sensitive private issues that needed to be, and were, resolved discreetly without becoming matters of public record.
In 1998 Chief Justice Rehnquist appointed Mr. Cooper to the Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure of the Judicial Conference of the United States, where he served for three terms. He also served as a Public Member, appointed by President George H.W. Bush, of the National Commission on Judicial Discipline and Removal. He is a member of numerous professional associations, including the American Law Institute (since 1993) and the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers (since 1996). He is also an active member of the Federalist Society and the Republican National Lawyers Association, which in 2010 named him Republican Lawyer of the Year and in 2016 honored him with its Edwin Meese III Award.
Mr. Cooper has published scores of articles and spoken extensively on constitutional and legal policy topics. He has appeared before congressional committees on 26 occasions, testifying as an expert on a wide variety of legal issues, including the Chevron doctrine of judicial deference to administrative agencies, the diversity of citizenship jurisdiction of federal courts, statehood bills for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, and the impeachment of President Clinton.
Hugh and Hazel Darling Foundation Professor of Law; Director, Center for the Study of Constitutional Originalism, University of San Diego School of Law
Jacob E. Davis and Jacob E. Davis II Chair in Law, Moritz Colleg, The Ohio State University
Professor Shane came to Ohio State in 2003 from Carnegie Mellon University's H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management. He is an internationally recognized scholar in administrative law, with a specialty in separation of powers law, and has co-authored leading casebooks on each subject. He has served on the faculty at the University of Iowa College of Law and was dean at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.
In addition to his outstanding law teaching and scholarship, Professor Shane has received a National Science Foundation grant for interdisciplinary study related to cyberspace and democracy. At Ohio State, he provides strong leadership in interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching.
Fellow in Law and Government, American University Washington College of Law
William Yeomans joined the faculty of law of the American University Washington College of law in 2009 where he teaches courses on civil rights, legislation and the legislative process. From 2006 until 2009, he served as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s Chief Counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Prior to that, he spent 26 years at the Department of Justice where he litigated and supervised civil rights cases in the federal courts at all levels involving voting rights, school desegregation, employment discrimination, housing discrimination, hate crimes, police misconduct, abortion clinic violence, and human trafficking. He served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Chief of Staff, and acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. He has also been Legal Director of the Alliance for Justice and the first Director of Programs for the American Constitution Society, where he spearheaded the launch of two publications: the Harvard Law and Policy Review and Advance.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
Joseph Kushner Distinguished Professor of Civil Liberties Law, Hofstra University School of Law
After graduation from Harvard Law School, Professor Friedman worked for the New York City law firm of Kaye Scholer, Fierman Hays & Handler. He left the firm when his play, The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald , was produced on Broadway and was later made into a television movie. He became general counsel of a New York publishing firm, Chelsea House Publishers, and then was selected as associate director of the Committee on Courtroom Conduct for the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, where he and Norman Dorsen wrote Disorder in the Court , the leading work on the subject. Thereafter, he was the director of the Committee for Public Justice and staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union during the Watergate era, where he litigated numerous cases dealing with national security, misuse of government power, the legality of the Vietnam War and the draft, and the First Amendment. He continues to write amicus briefs on important Supreme Court cases for the ACLU, PEN American Center, the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and other public interest groups. He has testified before Congress on numerous occasions.
Professor Friedman is the author of more than 100 law journal articles and newspaper columns in such publications as The New York Times, The Nation, The New Republic, and The American Scholar. His bookThe Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 1789-1969 , won the annual Scribes Award for the best book on a legal subject. Among his other books areThe Supreme Court Confronts Abortion, Unquestioning Obedience to the President, The Wise Minority and Southern Justice .He is a leading copyright lawyer and has represented such entertainers as Kathleen Turner and James Brown as well as many authors such as John McPhee, I.B. Singer, Stephen Spender, Hunter Thompson, Susan Sontag, Oscar Hijuelos and the Estates of T.S. Eliot and Edith Wharton. He has also represented Jean Harris in an important First Amendment case dealing with the "Son of Sam" law, and Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, for whom he obtained a writ of habeas corpus, freeing him from 19 years of imprisonment. His activities on behalf of Hurricane Carter were featured in the film "The Hurricane" starring Denzel Washington. He acts as general counsel to PEN American Center, a leading writers group fighting censorship.
He lectures regularly to federal judges around the country, under the auspices of the Federal Judicial Center, on civil rights and criminal procedure. He frequently lectures at continuing legal education gatherings, such as those sponsored by the Practising Law Institute, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the American Bar Association/American Law Institute, on subjects such as civil rights, civil procedure, criminal procedure and the First Amendment.
Founding Partner, Lally & Misir, LLP
Deborah Misir is a founding partner of Lally & Misir, LLP. She specializes in complex civil and white collar trial and appellate litigation before federal, state and administrative courts. In addition, she provides advice on regulatory compliance, and public policy issues. In addition to her practice with the firm, Ms. Misir is a professor at Touro Law School, where she has taught constitutional and administrative law, and directs the Veterans Clinic.
Ms. Misir’s clients have included employers, unions, trade associations, local governments, and companies in the finance, hospitality, technology and energy sectors. She has also represented many individuals, including other lawyers, in white collar criminal, ethics and employment matters.
A leading federal litigator and expert on constitutional and government regulatory law, Ms. Misir has over twenty years of experience in both government and private practice, including briefing over seventy federal Circuit Courts of Appeals cases up to and including writs of certiorari and amicus briefs before the U.S. Supreme Court, making numerous federal appellate oral arguments, and serving as lead counsel on many federal civil and criminal district court matters. She has won several cases with published decisions in the federal courts.
Before entering private practice, Ms. Misir served in the Administration of President George W. Bush as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Policy at the U.S. Department of Labor, ethics attorney at the White House Counsel’s Office, and Chief of Staff of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Ms. Misir started her career at the U.S. Department of Justice, serving in the Executive Office for Immigration Review, headquarters of the former U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and the Civil Division. At the Justice Department, among other things, she was specially assigned as counsel to the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force, the counter-terrorism and intelligence task force created in the immediate wake of 9/11 to prevent future attacks, and as counsel to the U.S. delegation to the United Nation’s International Maritime Organization (IMO).
Ms. Misir graduated with a B.A. with honors in political science from the University of Chicago, and an M.A. from the University of Chicago’s Masters of Arts Program in the Social Sciences. She earned her law degree from the University of Minnesota Law School. After law school, Ms. Misir served honorably in the U.S. Marine Corps until an injury cut short her service.
Ms. Misir is President of the Indian American Bar Association of Long Island and Queens. She serves on the National Alumni Board of the University of Chicago’s Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences (MAPSS), and previously served on the National Board of Governors of the Republican National Lawyers Association. She is a member of the American Bar Association, the Federal Bar Council, and the Nassau County Bar Association.
President and General Counsel, Public Interest Legal Foundation
J. Christian Adams is the President and General Counsel of the Public Interest Legal Foundation. He served from 2005 to 2010 in the Voting Section at the United States Department of Justice Voting Section. President Trump appointed Adams to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. President Trump also appointed Adams as a Commissioner to the United States Commission on Civil Rights where he also now serves with a term through 2025. He has been involved in election law lawsuits in 33 states and the territory of Guam. He has represented multiple presidential campaigns in election litigation. He has a law degree from the University of South Carolina School of Law. He is a member of the South Carolina and Virginia Bars.
Associate Editor, Washington Times and Senitor Editor, The American Spectator
Learned Hand Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Jack Goldsmith is the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, a non-resident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and co-founder of Lawfare. He teaches and writes about presidential power, national security law, federal courts, conflict of laws, international law, and internet law. Before coming to Harvard, Professor Goldsmith served as Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel from 2003-2004, and Special Counsel to the Department of Defense from 2002-2003. He was a Professor at the University of Chicago Law School from 1997-2002, and at the University of Virginia School of Law from 1994-1997. Before entering the academy, Professor Goldsmith was an associate at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C., from 1992-1994. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy from 1990-1991, for Court of Appeals Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson from 1989-1990, and for Judge George Aldrich on the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal from 1991-1992. Professor Goldsmith received a B.A. from Washington and Lee University, a B.A. and M.A. from Oxford University, and a J.D. from Yale Law School.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Judge Katsas was appointed to the D.C. Circuit in December 2017. He graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, where he was an executive editor on the Harvard Law Review. Between 1989 and 1992, he served as a law clerk to Judge Edward Becker on the Third Circuit, to then-Judge Clarence Thomas on the D.C. Circuit, and to Justice Thomas on the Supreme Court. Between 1992 and 2001, he was an associate and then partner in the Washington office of Jones Day, where he specialized in appellate and complex civil litigation. Between 2001 and 2009, he served in many senior positions in the Department of Justice, including as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division and as Acting Associate Attorney General. In 2009, he returned to Jones Day. From January to December 2017, he served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President.
Before joining the bench, Judge Katsas argued more than 75 appeals, including three cases in the Supreme Court, 13 cases in the D.C. Circuit, and cases in every other federal court of appeals. By appointment of the Chief Justice, he served on the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules from 2013 to 2017. In 2016, he was elected to membership in the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers.
Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley; Senior Research Fellow, School of Civic Leadership, Civitas Institute, University of Texas at Austin; Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law. He is also Distinguished Visiting Scholar, School of Civic Leadership and Senior Research Fellow, Civitas Institute, at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
His most recent book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court, co-authored with Robert Delahunty, was published in 2023. Professor Yoo’s other books include Defender-in-Chief: Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power; Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War, Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare, and Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George Bush.
Professor Yoo has published more than 100 articles in academic journals on subjects including national security, constitutional law, international law, and the Supreme Court. He also regularly contributes to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Review, among others.
Professor Yoo has served in all three branches of government. He was an official in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on national security and terrorism issues after the 9/11 attacks. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He has been a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and federal appeals Judge Laurence Silberman. He has been a visiting professor at Seoul National University in South Korea, the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, Keio University in Japan, Trento University in Italy, the University of Chicago, and the Free University of Amsterdam.
Professor Yoo supervises the Public Law and Policy Program and the California Constitution Center. He also serves on the boards of the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Federalist Society’s Separation of Powers and Federalism Division, the Universidad Cientifica del Sur Law School, and the Asia-Pacific Law Institute at Seoul National University. He is a winner of the Federalist Society’s Paul Bator award and been the Edwin Meese III Originalism Lecturer at the Heritage Foundation.
Professor Yoo graduated from Yale Law School and summa cum laude from Harvard College.
Was the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act a Proper Exercise of Congressional Authority Under the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause?
R Cozzens, Leon Friedman, Deborah Misir
The Long Island Lawyers Chapter hosted this debate on May 22, 2012, at The Davenport...
Was the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act a Proper Exercise of Congressional Authority Under the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause?
Long Island Lawyers Chapter
Mineola, NYSchool Discipline and Disparate Impact
John R. Martin
Note from the Editor: This paper analyzes the U.S. Department of Education’s proposed use of...
Mexico's Federal Law of Firearms and Explosives
David B. Kopel
In recent years, gun control has become an important international issue. For example, some persons...
Are the Recent Recess Appointments Constitutional?
Charles J. Cooper, Michael B. Rappaport, Peter M. Shane, William R. Yeomans, Dean Reuter
Mr. Reuter: Welcome to the Federalist Society’s practice group podcast. The following podcast, hosted by...
The Rule of Law & the Holder Department of Justice
The Colorado Lawyers Chapter
Denver, COEvening Reception with Quin Hillyer
Event of Interest
Obamacare on Trial: Will the Supreme Court Uphold the Affordable Care Act?
Charlotte, North CarolinaLuncheon: John Yoo on "Taming Globalization"
Irvine, California